Page:The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes.djvu/156

140 Arnold Baxter, who carried a tray containing a plate of bread and two bowls of beef stew.

"Hungry, I'll wager," said the captain laconically. All the pleasantness he had previously exhibited had vanished.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let us starve so long," replied Tom, who never hesitated to speak his mind.

"Hi! don't talk that way, or you shall have nothing," cried Arnold Baxter. "We are masters, and you must understand it so."

The captain set down the lantern and released the right hand of each of the prisoners. Then the tray was set upon an upturned box, and they were told to eat what they wanted, the captain and Arnold Baxter sitting down to watch them.

There was no use to "stand upon their dignity," as Tom afterward expressed it, so they fell to without protest, and it must be confessed that the stew was just what their stomachs, in that weakened state, needed. It did not take long to get away with the larger portion of the bread and all of what the bowls contained.

"You can thank your stars that you got meal," said Arnold Baxter. "You don't deserve it."

"According to you, I suppose we don't deserve anything but abuse," replied Tom. "But, never